Letters for personal catharsis

Summertime Mania

Dinner for two. Two days, that is, and I made it both nights. Yes, it was pre-made this and frozen that. Doesn’t matter. Had to go shopping for the meal, decide on the side dishes, coordinate the cooking, and do it. I’ve been out running errands, taking care of stuff, and feeling a bit more like an adult tho it’s still that 17-18 year old, just realizing she can do ANYTHING because she’s all grown up and NOT a 50 year old grumpy woman. But hey! That’s a psychological age growth of 10-12 years in a short period of time. Pretty good.

My brother leant his sensei a copy of my book to read. The man read it through twice. TWICE (he’s very earnest in his desire to help us find out feet here). Laughed out loud. That’s good; it’s the advertisement/tag line I’ve got on the cover – It made me laugh out loud! Maybe he knows someone who knows someone in the publishing biz. I have NO problem with it getting picked up in Dutch. I can’t do the translation myself, but I can oversee it. Or put it in comic book form. Don’t care. Just get it out and market it in a way I can’t do for myself. Make me money. Please.

In between making dinner and running errands, I’ve been discussing the living room layout with my brother. The studio corner keyboards are packed in their cases and a whole extra two square feet has opened up (trust me, in THIS room 2 square feet is a gaping hole). Little did I know that my little spoken wistful thought,”If only the baker’s rack wasn’t right there” was going to be the next stone popping out of the dyke. My brother’s now calculated that by moving the keyboards we can move our computer desks over, which will open up room by the dining table corner. The dining table can be shifted just a bit to open up more room so the baker’s rack can be shifted. Then we’ve got space in the kitchen area to get a small floating island or something that will give us more counter space. Right now if you don’t do the dishes you HAVE no counter space. A bit more room and I might actually be able to make a quiche or my sausage rolls or something more tricky.

And you have no idea how much my brother is jonesing for one of my sausage rolls.

Sorry to talk so much about my brother right now. He’s still on his manic kick. Mania in an ADHD person. It’s like a flood; there’s just no stopping it. He came into the living room to roll a joint yesterday and spent one and half hours talking. Nonstop. It’s hard to even have a singular thought right now. Every time I try to think, he’s up and speaking. So it usually goes something like this:

Hm. I can’t forget to stop and get a prescription…AND THE METAL HOLDS IT ABSOLUTELY SECURELY BECAUSE I’VE PUT THE POINT UP FOR EXTRA STRENGTH…Calcium! That’s what I need…ALL 14 ARE DONE. HAVE YOU TESTED IT YET? GO ON. GET UP AND SEE. AND I’VE GOT THOSE LIGHTS IN. DID YOU…Been forgetting to ask for calcium…GET THEM UP IN THE TREE. WHAT DO YOU THINK? And I need to ask about…BUT WE NEED TO WAIT UNTIL IT’S DARK…Nasal spray for my allergies.

I’ll end it by saying ‘nasal spray’ out loud, which has NOTHING to do with what my brother was talking about and it stops him completely for a moment. Then I’ll have to say ‘stray thought’ in response to that puzzled look I get.

It’s not really a stray thought. But I do that a lot. With many people. Unless someone really grabs my attention (or I FORCE myself to pay attention, like in class), my own line of thought never stops. I’ll be writing songs, stories, thinking of what I need to do, what I’d like to say, the dream I had last night; I’ll focus on a LOT other than what the other person is saying. Sometimes I focus on my inner world so much I don’t actually hear what the other person says. That’s tripped me up quite a few times. I told you that! Don’t you remember it? Well, I would had I been paying attention.

Been working hard on stopping that behavior. It’s very difficult for me. Even when I TRY my mind strays, and I have to rope it in.

I LOVE this hair.

And I’ve written some incredible works processing my own stuff while someone else is talking. No offense. Maybe whatever they’re talking about triggers the process, the words. Can’t honestly say. I don’t MEAN to be rude.

Just like I don’t MEAN to fall asleep while watching television in the evenings. Even had some coffee last night to help me stay awake. Didn’t do jack. It’s like I get hypnotized. I feel a little bored, my thoughts buzz off, and the next thing I know I’m jerking awake in my chair.

I said the magic word – boredom. Said it before and I’ll say it again: things move too slow. Communication, transportation, LIFE moves too damned slow. I like/want/need my down time. But pick up the pace the rest of the time, okay?

The sun is coming up now and all I can think of is that I must wait because nothing is open yet. Funny thing I learned the other day; the Dutch refer to the time of midnight to 6 a.m. as ‘night’, not morning. So I literally wake up at night, not in the morning. Trying to keep that in mind, telling myself it’s a real reason to stay in bed another hour. It’s not working. Somewhere between 5 and 6 I come to and from there I might as well just get out of bed because thus far I’ve had very little success falling back asleep. It’ll get worse with the sun rising earlier each day and the birdsong increasing outside my window.

Currently a final year English student at the University of Cambridge. Producing Intern for Fuel Theatre July-October 2016. Aspiring Arts Administrator/Theatre Producer, blogging about my projects (mostly).

#ActuallyAutistic - An Aspie obsessed with writing. This site is intend to inspire through sharing stories & experiences. The opinions of the writers are their own. I am just an Autistic woman - NOT a medical professional.